The battle of Culloden, which Johnstone experienced - and later wrote about - at first hand
Even in Rome, it’s cold in January.
So the young man coming out into the pre-dawn must have wrapped his hunting attire around him at the beginning of the second week of 1744. He was leaving behind him the familiarity of the squares around him - the Trevi fountains, the church of the holy apostles where he and his family had attended mass, and most of all his home for some years now - the Palazzo Muti, now renamed the Palazzo di Re since the young man’s father, James Stuart, recognised by the pope and an as yet indeterminate number of Britons as James VIII/ III, king of England, Scotland and Ireland, had taken up residence.